We celebrated by joining in on a charitable event at my barn. My trainer and barn manager are sisters and their mother passed away from pancreatic cancer several years ago. The non-profit, Canter for the Cure, was created in her memory and every fall there is a day full of riding activities, food, and a raffle to raise money for pancreatic cancer research. Since one of my someday goals is to ride in a hunter derby, Maestro and I joined in on the hunter derby in the field in the morning. No scoring or anything, just a bunch of people on horses (or ponies) jumping around and having fun. As expected there were a few falls between the excitement of a sudden cool morning and a bunch of horses all together in a big field, but no major injuries and a lot of fun. Maestro and I went around the course twice. We had never jumped out there before, and the first time through he was hesitant to one fence and stopped at a tiny log on a hill we were trying to trot over. I think that log took him by surprise, lol. I was so impressed with him – sure he was a little sour about leaving the rest of the horses who were all standing together at first but he went when asked then jumped around bravely despite being a bit nervous (you can see it in his lead swapping). He even took me over the wagon wheel jump which is definitely bigger than anything else we’ve done together. It’s the last fence in the video below and doesn’t even look big of course, lol.

The best thing Maestro has done for me is bring the fun back to riding, particularly jumping and showing. I never stopped loving riding, but I spent a long time riding horses that needed me to very carefully balance their workload which left me feeling drained. P due to his age and Stampede due to his back issues. Stampede of course being the more extreme case, P and I mostly played around together for fun.

Maestro has given me the confidence to start thinking about what we could potentially do together in the future. The confidence that he’s a good boy and I can go hack him out in the field alone like I used to do with Phoenix. It gets me so excited to see what we can do together.

So glad that you muted that video so no one hears my commentating. Lol. Also, sorry that it is not my best work but it was hard to see you in the distance and then I had to move around horses to get the wagon wheel. I will fully support you in saying that in person that thing was HUGE!! The video does not do that justice and my horse nephew was so good over it! He made his auntie proud!